Out on a fishing expedition, and the fish aren't biting. Suddenly, there's a snag on the line. Someone's taken the bait; hook, line, and sinker. A quick flick of the rod and a frantic reeling in reveals your prize to be... an old boot. Dammit.

Several false alarms and several boots later, you start to wonder. Why are there so many boots? Fish don't wear boots, hell, they don't even have feet. Yet there seems to be more boots in the water than there are fish. And it's not just boots, either. Spare tires, tin cans, other useless junk... why does it seem like you're fishing in Lake Erie?

Well, you're just having a bad run of luck. The bane of fishermen in old cartoons and fishing minigames alike, Fishing for Sole is when you seem to pull just about everything out of the water... except for fish.

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In an episode of Pokémon, Misty hooks a tea kettle after a surprising struggle.

Not to mention the first episode where she hooks Ash. "Aw, it's just a kid!"

Taken to ridiculous extremes in one episode of Detective Conan: fishing in a rain-swollen river, Kogoro hooks something huge...and discovers to his horror that he has hooked his rental car, which was swept away in a flash flood.

Episode 352 has a straight example where the Detective Boys participate in a fishing tournament and catch a boot.

The fisherman Ai sits with in the OVA series Video Girl Ai catches a boot which she keeps for a bit.

Official TouhouYonkoma comic Inaba of the Moon, Inaba of the Earth has Kaguya trying her hand at fishing. She manages to fish out random junk like the classic boot, an empty can of mackerel, an old magazine, and Reisen, while missing all the fishes in the lake. As a strip title points out, "in a sense, it's an amazing hit rate".

A José Carioca comic book short features a sort of inversion. Being as poor as he is, he fancies the idea of a free pair of boots, and continues fishing for the other boot. Cut to an annoyed Joe sitting in front of a large pile of fish but still just one boot.

This is a common gag in Chuck Billy's stories from Monica's Gang. One short was about his cousin catching a pair of shoes which he uses for a long Chain of Deals that ends with him buying a new pair of shoes. He then wonders if all the time spent was worth it.

In the children's book The Family Under The Bridge, the protagonist, a Parisian hobo, keeps a shoe he found because he might come across its mate someday. As it happens, he sees a man fish it out of the river.

In Samurai Sentai Shinkenger episode 7, the blue ranger has to go fishing for his mecha. He's shown pulling up a boot, which he adds to a pile of trash.

And in the Power Rangers Samurai episode "Runaway Spike", Bulk and Spike end up finally getting some work helping Antonio fish. They actually manage to bring in a fair few fish, while it's Antonio who ends up reeling in a boot.

Almost invoked in Red Dwarf, in which Lister notes that his fishing trips were mainly For the Lulz and, if anything, he went condom fishing.

On Deadliest Catch this is the basis of many of the pranks that crab boat crews try to pull on each other. This comes in two flavors:

One version is to haul up a crab pot belonging to another boat, dump out whatever crab is already in said pot, and load it with other stuff (garbage is one common example). Sometimes, to add on more insult, the pot would also be tampered with (welding the door shut is common; one boat also slipped a section of pipe down a crab pot's line so as to essentially make it difficult for the targeted boat's crew to haul it up).

The second, wackier version is to replace the crab pot in question with something else entirely. The examples shown in the series were a porta-potty and a wrecked pickup truck, the latter of which impressed even the victims!

The prologue for Young Hercules episode 16 has Iolaus catch a boot fishing, complete with a pun about "filet of sole".

Swedish board game Old Pike features, in addition to the titular Old Pike and a big deck of different small fish: an old boot, an old hat, an "electric eel" (which looks a bit like a fluorescent tube bent like an S) and a tin of sardines. The two last cards are the reason that the rulebook states you need seven live fish to win. Emphasis from the original.

While fishing in World of Warcraft with fishing skill lower than the required for the zone, significant part (up to all of them) of catches will be useless junk, like twigs, for some reason specifically lacking boots. However, even at high enough levels to not catch any junk, plenty of actual fish is useless to the degree of not even being a worthy Vendor Trash. It also sometimes is inverted, with rare non-fish catches being more valuable, or at least cosmetic.

It can happen in the Animal Crossing series. You can get boots, cans, and tires. It's impossible to know that they're junk ahead of time, since they look and fight back just like real fish. (No idea how or why they fight, but they do.) In City Folk, some villagers may end up locked out of their houses, leaving you to fish for the key.

Every Suikoden game since the second have included a fishing-game, and the 'Boot' has always been a possible alternate catch. Two amusing details: Those Boots are actually equippable an an Accessory item, which is somewhat odd unless they always come in pairs. And you actually have a 'biggest size caught' listing for the Boot as well as the various types of fish, only instead of being measured in centimeters, it's measured in boot size...

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess both plays this straight and subverts it. Non-fish objects that you can catch include the usual junk like sticks, cans, and old cartwheels, but also some good things such as an empty bottle, a bag of rupees, or the most effective fishing lure in the game. The sign in the fishing hole area warning people not to throw junk in the water might be a Lampshade Hanging, or it might just be a clue about dredging up the good stuff.

The game even seems to imply that fishing up an Empty Bottle is a more valuable treasure than any fish and snagging it helps with the litter problem since you're recycling the bottle.

Actually a Chekhov's Gun back to a comment made about the first bottle you receive.

Ultima Online had this happen and decrease in likeliness as you gained more skill. Due to poor balancing the boots were a far better catch then the fish; food was in abundant supply and boots sold for more.

Maraqua from Neopets has "Underwater Fishing", where boots, tin cans, driftwood, broken fishing poles, and other pieces of junk are frequent catches.

Occurs in some of the Harvest Moon games that feature fishing, such as Friends of Mineral Town.

In Harvest Moon DS, you actually have to catch a Bottle so you can propose to the mermaid, Leia.

Happens also in the fishing minigames at Gaia Online. Interestingly enough, you can trade your garbage for special hats at the fishing shop, which in turn managed to create a market for lake garbage. Like the saying goes, one man's rubbish is another man's treasure...

The short-lived minor meme: "Johnny K. is a litterbug", referring to the amounts of trash that could be dredged up by Gambino Island.

There's actually a special enhancement exclusively used to invoke this trope in Final Fantasy XI, although the situation is reversed compared to World of Warcraft, as most items fished up really are junk, and most of the fish will result in a better profit(Although the junk was more valuable before, but it got heavily nerfed due to massive RMT exploiting).

In RuneScape, there's a chance of catching a boots with a big fishing net. With that method, it's also possible to receive gloves.

In Chrono Cross, one of the fisherman Korcha's special attacks has him reel in a monster that hits the enemies. Sometimes, however, he'll reel in a boot that does nothing.

The "7Seas" Mini Game in Second Life has a variety of boots you can catch with your fishing pole. Like the Suikoden example above, these are wearable items and often have shiny bling.

"Okay, it's cool, but I don't think we can eat this for dinner... do you want it?"

Happens constantly in Rune Factory 3. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that they don't stack. Hopefully you wanted that entire inventory of boots and cans.

In the text-based MMORPG World of Hollow, fishing can net you various fish, a boot, or even a new fishing pole. It's a bit of a game to see if you can fish new poles out of the lake faster than you break them on fish that get away.

The drakeskin boots in Blades of Avernum (the best boots available among the predesigned items) are obtained in one of the predesigned scenarios by fishing at a particular spot after achieving a high Luck Stat. The message prompt is exactly as follows: "You have a fantastic stroke of luck! You fish out a pair of boots."

MMORPGVideo Game/Mabinogi has a fishing skill and minigame. Aside from fish, catches include any number of different items, including quests, clothing and armour, crafting items, etc. Some items can only be found via fishing. The higher the player's rank, the more valuable the items (and fish) that can be caught.

Torchlight and the Fate series involve fishing minigames where the fish sometimes contain items. It's usually jewelry or gems, but sometimes other things. There are also actual fish, which when fed to your pet turn it into a powerfulPet Monstrosity.

Parodied extensively in the Futurama episode "The Deep South", when the crew goes fishing. Leela catches a boot with a harpoon. Then she gets something that must be good, since it's twenty times heavier than a boot... and it's a crate containing ten pairs of boots. She gets confident about the next one since the thing is clearly moving... and then pulls up a boot being eaten by Zoidberg. And they were fishing this at the exact center of the Atlantic Ocean.